An opportunity for additional new residents to live here?

Anyone who claims they want to give more people a chance to live in Worthington needs to be more specific. At face value, anyone is welcome in Worthington assuming they can find a place to live and can afford to live in that place.

Maybe the point is that Worthington is not affordable for many people. This is true, but market forces drive this outcome. Simply building more supply will allow some new folks to live in Worthington at market rates.

But it is incorrect to say increasing housing supply will decrease property taxes. It won’t. In fact, there is no case in modern history where increasing housing supply has decreased property taxes.

It is also incorrect to say increasing housing supply will decrease rent costs and home purchase costs. Theoretically, it could. But since we are in a region – a growing population region – the entire region would need to build enough housing where there then becomes a 20% vacancy rate across the region.

Even then, when other parts of the region theoretically could lower rents and home prices, Worthington is still a very desirable community. So even if the stars align for the region, it likely won’t impact Worthington’s market.

Sadly, since 2010, no metro community in the nation has been able to decrease rent costs and home prices by simply increasing supply. Usually the opposite is true. In some cases, the cost trajectory does a flat line.

So, if housing can’t be any cheaper, and property taxes won’t decrease, proponents of high-density housing simply want more people socioeconomically like them coming to Worthington to live in new apartments and houses.

To force cheaper housing, the government would have to be financially involved in some way. The city could help subsidize housing construction with an agreement for the developer to keep rent/sale prices down.

Alternatively, the city could allow HUD-based developers to build 300+ unit apartments in the city. These projects would be heavily regulated and would reserve a percentage of units for different income levels (e.g. 10% poverty level, 20% at AMI, etc.).

These are the options. I wonder what the pro-profit development people want. If anyone says they “just want an opportunity for to able to share in our community,” ask them specifically what they mean.